README (8417B)
1 Mixmaster 3.0 -- anonymous remailer software -- (C) 1999 - 2000 Anonymizer Inc. 2 (C) 2000-2008 The Mixmaster Development Team 3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 5 This program consists of 6 7 * a remailer client: 8 9 The remailer client supports sending anonymous mail using Cypherpunk and 10 Mixmaster remailers. It supports OpenPGP encryption (compatible with PGP 2, 11 PGP 5 and up, and GnuPG). 12 13 The client can be used with a menu-based user interface and with command line 14 options. 15 16 * a remailer: 17 18 The remailer supports the Cypherpunk and Mixmaster message formats. It can 19 be integrated with the mail delivery system of Unix-based computers or use 20 the POP3 and SMTP protocols for mail transfer. Mixmaster includes an 21 automated abuse-handling system. 22 23 Please report any problems via the bug and patch trackers at 24 http://sourceforge.net/projects/mixmaster/ 25 26 27 Installation: 28 ------------ 29 30 Libraries: 31 32 Mixmaster requires the libraries OpenSSL, zlib, and pcre. 33 34 If you want to use the menu-based user interface, you also need the ncurses 35 library. If these libraries are not installed on your system, you will need 36 to obtain the latest versions from the sources below and extract them in the 37 the Src/ directory first. 38 39 OpenSSL is available from http://www.openssl.org/source/ 40 41 Ncurses can be obtained from http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses/ 42 43 The Perl Compatable Regular Expressions library can be obtained from 44 ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/ 45 46 The zlib compression libraries can be obtained from 47 http://www.gzip.org/zlib/ 48 49 To install or upgrade Mixmaster, type `./Install'. 50 51 Mixmaster clients rely on pingers to compile statistics and keyrings for 52 currently operating remailers. A list of public pingers can be obtained from 53 http://www.noreply.org/allpingers/. 54 55 Alternatively clients can operate their own pingers to generate statistics. 56 Pinger software can be obtained from http://www.palfrader.org/echolot/. If you 57 choose this option, please publish the pinger results for the benefit of other 58 Mixmaster users and notify the metastats maintainer at admin@mixmin.net. 59 60 The required files published by pingers are:- 61 pubring.asc Type 1 remailer keys 62 pubring.mix Type 2 remailer keys 63 rlist.txt List of reliable type 1 remailers 64 mlist.txt List of reliable type 2 remailers 65 type2.list List of known type 2 remailers (optional) 66 67 Using the remailer client: 68 ------------------------- 69 70 To use the menu-based user interface, simply run `mixmaster'. To send an 71 anonymous or pseudonymous reply to a message from within your mail or news 72 reader, you can pipe it to `mixmaster'. 73 74 The interactive mode supports sending mail and contains a simple mail reading 75 function. OpenPGP messages are encrypted and decrypted automatically. 76 77 In the non-interactive mode, Mixmaster reads a message from a file or from its 78 standard input. The command line options are described in the manual page 79 (mixmaster.1). 80 81 82 Mixmaster as a remailer: 83 ----------------------- 84 85 The Mixmaster remailer can be installed on any account that can receive mail. 86 Non-remailer messages will be delivered as usual. If you have root access, you 87 may want to create a new user (e.g., `remailer') and install Mixmaster under 88 that user id. 89 90 The Install script provides a simple way to set up the remailer. More 91 information about configuring Mixmaster can be found in the manual page. 92 Typically, incoming mail is piped to "mixmaster -RM". In a UUCP setting, it may 93 be useful to use just "mixmaster -R", and run "mixmaster -S" once all messages 94 have arrived. 95 96 Announcing a new remailer to the public is most commonly done by posting the 97 remailer keys and capabilities to alt.privacy.anon-server as well as the 98 "remops" mailing list. Information about the remops list can be found here: 99 http://lists.mixmin.net/mailman/listinfo/remops 100 101 102 Installation problems: 103 --------------------- 104 105 In case one of the libraries Mixmaster uses is installed incorrectly on your 106 system, place the library source code (available from the locations listed 107 above) in the Src directory, remove the old Makefile, run the Install script 108 again and answer `y' when asked whether to use the source code. 109 110 The ncurses library can use termcap and terminfo databases. The Mixmaster 111 Install script tries to find out whether terminfo is available. If you get a 112 "Can't open display" error when starting the Mixmaster menu, run "./configure 113 --enable-termcap; make lib/libncurses.a" in the ncurses directory. 114 115 116 Security notes: 117 -------------- 118 119 The ciphers and the anonymizing mix-net protocol used in Mixmaster correspond 120 to the state of the art (see the Security Considerations section of the 121 Mixmaster Protocol specification for details). However, no security proofs 122 exist for any practical cryptosystem. It is unlikely that their security will 123 be broken, but there is no "perfect security". Software can also contain 124 implementation errors. The complete Mixmaster source code is available for 125 public review, so that everyone can verify what the program does, and it is 126 unlikely that security related errors or secret back doors in the software 127 would go unnoticed. 128 129 No software is secure if run in an insecure environment. For that reason you 130 must make sure that there is no malicious software (such as viruses) running on 131 your computer. Deleted files and even passphrases can in many cases be read 132 from the hard disk if an adversary has access to the computer. The use of disk 133 encryption programs is recommended to avoid this risk. 134 135 Anonymous messages are secure as long as at least one of the remailers you use 136 in a chain is honest. You can use up to 20 remailers in a chain, but 137 reliability and speed decrease with longer chains. Four is a reasonable number 138 of remailers to use. Many remailer operators sign their keys. You should verify 139 those signatures with OpenPGP to make sure that you have the actual remailer 140 keys. 141 142 Anonymous keys usually cannot be introduced to the OpenPGP web of trust without 143 giving up anonymity. For that reason, this client will use any OpenPGP key 144 found on the key ring, whether it is certified or not. Your key ring must not 145 contain any invalid keys when used with this program. 146 147 If you want to use a pseudonym, the client will ask you for a passphrase to 148 protect the nym database. Your passphrase should be long, and hard to guess. 149 Anyone who gets hold of your nym database and private keys and can determine 150 the passphrase will be able to compromise your pseudonymous identities. Note 151 that some operating systems may store your passphrase on your hard disk in 152 clear. 153 154 While a good client passphrase can protect your keys if someone gets hold of 155 your files, the remailer passphrase offers only casual protection for the 156 remailer keys. If you install a remailer, the remailer passphrase must be 157 different from your private passphrases. 158 159 Note that nym.alias.net style nym-servers are trivially breakable by an 160 adversary performing a long-term intersection attack. Discussion of 161 these attacks can be found in section 4.2 of The Pynchon Gate, by 162 Sassaman, Cohen, and Mathewson, 2005. Use of Type I remailers for any 163 purpose is discouraged. 164 165 166 Copyright: 167 --------- 168 169 Mixmaster may be redistributed and modified under certain conditions. This 170 software is distributed on an "AS IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, 171 either express or implied. See the file COPYRIGHT for details. 172 173 A license is required to use the IDEA(TM) algorithm for commercial purposes; 174 see the file idea.txt for details. 175 176 Mixmaster uses the compression library zlib by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler, 177 the free ncurses library and the regex library by Philip Hazel. This product 178 includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com). This 179 product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the 180 OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.OpenSSL.org/). For some platforms: This product 181 includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its 182 contributors. 183 184 Additionally, this software uses code provided by the members of the 185 Mixmaster development team. The members respectively hold the copyright 186 to the code in question, having elected to make it available under the 187 Mixmaster license. 188 189 All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 190 191 $Id: README 974 2008-03-03 17:40:11Z rabbi $